The Best Core Exercises for Spinal Cord Injury (with videos!)

As its name suggests, the core is the center of it all. A well-trained core leads to improved balance all around.

Especially if you have spinal cord injury, building a strong core is the best way to limit pain and discomfort.

It’s common for those who have spinal cord injury to get weak core muscles due to inactivity. A weak core will make even the simplest tasks like reaching across the table for a pen difficult due to poor balance.

Core Exercises for Spinal Cord Injury:

Everyone is going to experience recovery from spinal cord injury differently. Depending on the stage of your recovery, the range of exercises you can practice changes.

You may need to do assisted passive exercise to increase your range of motion before being able to do active exercise. Refer to our article on active vs passive exercise to learn the differences between the two.

Here are a couple of videos demonstrating core exercises for spinal cord injury:

1. Passive Range of Motion

This kind of exercise relies on the passive movement of your legs to stretch out your trunk area.

The shoulders should not move, just your legs.

You’ll feel the most pull at the sides of your core and in your spine.

2. Physical Therapy Core Exercises

Even though the title of this video directs these exercises to stroke patients, those with spinal cord injury will also benefit from these core exercises.

These simple core exercises don’t require any leg movement. You can even do them from your wheelchair! Just make sure that the locks are in place.

Notice that most of the time when you exercise your core, you’re also exercising your spine.

3. Assisted Kettlebell Exercises

The kettlebell helps add some resistance, but you can also do this exercise without it if it’s too difficult.

When doing more difficult exercises, you’ll typically have 2 people assisting you. One person will help stabilize you and while the other will guide you.

4. Trunk Raises

This exercise works both your arms and core by using your body weight for resistance.

The plank position will work the front of your core and the side by side movements will work your oblique muscles.

5. TRX Core Exercises

Here’s a video showing a patient who’s further along in her recovery. With the help of her physical therapists, she’s able to practice all sorts of different core exercises.

Hopefully these videos were inspirational and motivate you to try some on your own. They range from easy to difficult so regardless of how far along in your recovery you are, there’s a core exercise for you.

Does Paralysis Affect My Ability to do Core Exercises for Spinal Cord Injury?

When it comes to spinal cord injury, you can experience paralysis in the form of paraplegia or tetraplegia.

Paraplegia is when only the lower part of your body becomes paralyzed.

The bright side of this condition is that you can still voluntarily use your upper body to strengthen your muscles and neural connections.

Those with tetraplegia not only lose function and control in their lower body but also to their upper body. This makes it much more difficult to practice core exercises for spinal cord injury.

However, it’s definitely possible for those with tetraplegia to exercise through passive exercise. Physical therapists are trained to guide and assist you with exercise at any level of paralysis.

The only way to get better is to strengthen existing neural connections and gain muscle memory by regeneration of new connections.